Grammatical Aspect in English and Kurdish - University of Sulaimani

There are different views on aspect by different grammarians, among
them, for example, is Hartmann and Stork’s view, who define aspect as “a
grammatical category of the verb marked by prefixes, suffixes or internal
vowel changes indicating not so much its location in the (-tense) but the
duration and type of the action expressed” (1972:20).
Comrie (1976:3) states that “aspects are different ways of viewing
the internal temporal consistuency of a situation”. While Smith (1976:61)
has an interesting view on aspect in his “camera- metaphor”, he mentions
that “aspectual viewpoints function like the lens of a camera, making
objects visible to the receiver. Situations are the objects on which
viewpoints lenses are trained”. Quirk et al. (1985:188) and Greenbaum
and Quirk (1990:51) view aspect as “a grammatical category which
reflects the way in which the verb is regarded or experienced with respect
to time”. Crystal defines aspect as “a category used in the grammatical
analysis of verbs (along with tense and mood) referring primarily to the
way the grammar marks the duration or type of temporal activity denoted
by the verb” (1991:27).
While Gramely and Patzold (1992:146) explain that aspect is not
concerned with relating the time of the situation to any other time point,
but rather with the internal temporal consistuency of the situation”.
Richards et al (1992:22) identify aspect as that “grammatical
category which deals with how the event described by a verb is viewed such
as it is in progress, habitual, repeated, momentary, etc.” He also mentions
that aspect may be indicated by prefixes, suffixes or other categories of a
verb.
Trask (1993:21) describes aspect as “a grammatical category
which relates to the internal temporal structure of a situation”.
The above definitions emphasize the relationship between aspect and
the duration of the action denoted by the verb. Among all these definitions,
the definition by Comrie is the most comprehensive. It draws a clear
distinction between ‘aspect’ and ‘tense’. One can realize the difference
between situation-internal time (aspect) and situation-external time (tense).
From these it can be concluded that aspect refers to the internal
temporal consistuency of an event or the manner in which the action of the
verb is distributed through the time-space continuum. Tense, on the other
hand, refers to the location of an event in the continuum. However, only
Hartmann and Stork (1972:20) pay attention to the form or the structural
aspect of ‘aspects’. They explain that verbs change their forms by receiving
prefixes, suffixes or internal vowel changes so as to denote the duration of
an action.
2. The Notion of Time, Tense, and Aspect:
It can be noticed that ‘aspect’ does not occur alone but it always
occurs with ‘tense’. They relate the happening described by the verb to
time in the past, present, or future (Leech and Svartvik 1994:65). Aspect is
a difficult concept to grasp because it tends to conflate with the concept of
tense.
The term ‘tense’ is related to the linguistic expression of time
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